Lachish

Abstract

Abstract Focusing on one archaeological mound, Tell ed-Duweir, in the lowland region of Palestine, in the vicinity of Hebron, identified as biblical Lachish, the fortress city in the kingdom of Judah, Chapter 4 moves between London, the Tell, and its neighbouring villages. The chapter is a history of a landmark excavation, which uncovers the variety of its archaeological, biblical, anthropological, social, and political layers. Drawing on a wealth of written and visual materials at the Wellcome Institute, the British Museum Archives, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the National Archives, as well as on the press and archaeologists’ records, the chapter relates the identification of the Tell as Lachish, the discovery of the famous Lachish Letters (in pre-Exilic Hebrew), and their effect on Biblical Archaeology and epigraphy, to the rise of new fields of knowledge such as physical anthropology and anthropometrics. The chapter argues that the excavation project was regarded by archaeologists as a means of modernizing rural Palestine and the lives of Palestinian peasants and labourers. It recovers the modernizers’ daily life on the Tell and their representations of it in writing, photography, and documentary films. It also recoups the process of the Tell’s expropriation, as a historical monument, by the mandate authorities. Alongside the reports of archaeologists like James Leslie Starkey (who was murdered on his way from the Tell to the opening of the new Rockefeller museum in Jerusalem), Olga Tufnell, and Charles Inge, the chapter recovers the voices of villagers as they are heard through their petitions to the government about their denied access to the excavated land.